


Doctor Blythe

by annewithanl



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, I'll add more when I know what this is, More characters to be added, idk how to tag, it was all a dream, only anne remembers it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:56:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25223509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annewithanl/pseuds/annewithanl
Summary: Based on the prompt “Anne Shirley wakes up from a three year long Coma and realises the life she thought she had was all a dream, but Doctor Blythe is exactly the boy she married in her dream."This is a wip but I couldn't figure out how to share it so I'm posting it here lol
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 18
Kudos: 67





	Doctor Blythe

_ Dear Gilbert, _

_ I look like my mother... _

_Anne looked into the mirror, admiring her red hair for perhaps the first time._

Suddenly, a bright light shone in her eyes, blinding her. It wasn’t hot enough for there to be a fire, but that seemed the only explanation for the change from the soft candlelight to this blinding one. Anne tried to block her eyes, noticing only then that she was lying down. Hadn’t she just been writing at her desk? Maybe she had fallen asleep there, and Diana had moved her?

“Diana?” she called out, blinking her eyes open and realising, as her vision began to focus, that she wasn’t in her dorm room at all. She heard muffled but frantic voices, and then a clearer one, one she could make out:

“Miss Cuthbert, can you hear me?” It was a woman’s voice, soft and comforting.

“What’s going on? Where am I? Where’s Diana?” Anne sat up, fear settling in the bottom of her stomach as she looked out around the room.

Confusion didn’t come close to describing what she felt. While the machine which was connected to her didn’t scare her as it might have, it also couldn’t possibly make sense. She felt like two people. One, to which these bright lights and impossible instruments seemed familiar, and the other, the one which she felt was really _her,_ who had spent three years in Avonlea, who had only seen electricity a couple times while in Charlottetown, and who was quite frankly, terrified.

“Miss Cuthbert, I am nurse Jones. I know this may be very confusing, but you have just woken up from a coma.” Just then, as Anne looked up at this woman with kind eyes, another entered the room.

“Ah Doctor Rose! She’s just woken up, and is a bit disorientated. I’ll just check her vitals.”

“That would be great, thanks.”

“Winnifred!” Anne cried out, shocked.

“Uh..yes?” The doctor looked confused, which seemed only to distress his patient further.

“What’s going on? I don’t understand, where am I? You look different – have I really been in a coma for so long that you’re all grown up? And why are you here”

“Miss Cuthbert I think you’re just a little confused. That’s normal after having been in a coma for so long. You were in a coma for 3 years.”

“3 years? Do you mean to say the night I arrived at Queens was 3 years ago? When you left for Paris?” Anne knew, logically, that what she was saying didn’t make sense, that there was something going on that she couldn’t yet understand, but couldn’t articulate her thoughts well enough to express this. The doctor only smiled at her, sympathetically.

“I know this must be difficult to hear, but you were in a car accident. Luckily no one else was hurt, and your family are all safe. They’re downstairs at the moment, a nurse is just bringing them up.”

“A car accident?” Anne began, but she quickly decided that she wouldn’t be able to comprehend whatever answer he could give her, so instead asked “Matthew and Marilla?”

“Yes. You brother, Jerry, isn’t here today, though.” Anne laughed.

“Oh no, Jerry’s not my brother, not really. Although, he is staying at Green Gables now that I’m gone.” Anne stopped, aware that she had somehow said something wrong, and the doctor just gave her an odd look. She sucked in a breath.

“How are her vitals?”

“Everything looks good so far.” Anne had chosen to ignore what the nurse had been doing, to ignore the strange contraptions she used. She had resolved to maintain the reality she knew, and reject anything which didn’t fit with it, until she could understand what was happening. 

This went out of the window when Marilla rushed into the room, wearing trousers of all things! A cold feeling went down Anne’s spine. Something was not right.

“Oh my darling Anne! I’m so glad you’re awake. I thought we... that you-” Marilla burst into tears as she and Matthew wrapped their arms around the poor redhead.

The doctor cleared her throat. 

“I’m terribly sorry, but we just need to do a couple more checks, and make sure she’s all okay. You can of course stay in the room.” Matthew and Marilla stood back, the former holding his sister tight as she wiped her tears. The doctor diverted her attention to Anne. “Does anything hurt?”

The confusion and fear seemed to finally catch up with Anne, and she allowed it to flow through her veins.

“Will somebody _please_ tell me what is going on?” She all but shouted, “I don’t understand! The last thing I remember is writing a letter to Gil, about the book that you” she pointed to the Cuthberts “brought me, which belonged to my mother. In my dorm. At Queens. With Diana.”

The room was silent, aside from the life support machine which was connected to Anne.

“Miss Cuthbert, I believe that during your Coma you must have had a very vivid dream. Now, we don’t actually know very much about what goes on in the brain during a coma, but it is my understanding that they can be very lifelike, so I understand your alarm. However, I urge you to remain calm. I will do my best to help facilitate your transition back to your life, if you trust me. Now, I ask you again. Does anything hurt?” 

Gilbert was tired. His shift had been long, and it seemed he was meeting only his most difficult patients today. His break couldn’t have come at a better time, and he was glad to be out in the fresh air, even if it was only for fifteen minutes. 

His phone chimed, and he reached into his pocket to read the text.

**Winnie**

hey, we still on for tonight? x

Gilbert sighed. He had forgotten about his “date” with his colleague and girlfriend, Winnifred. He had been looking forward to it, but knew that he would be too exhausted from work to go to one of her socialite parties. 

hey. I’m really sorry, I’m having a really rough day! rain check?

After a few moments, his phone chimed again.

sure, don’t worry about it.hope it all goes okay :)

Gilbert sighed. Everything with Winnie was so easy. She smart, funny, kind, beautiful, and very well connected. They had met in college, and if it wasn’t for the financial support her father had provided him with, Gilbert definitely wouldn’t have gotten to the point in his career where he was now, a doctor at the age of just 26. Despite all of this, Gilbert had doubts about their relationship. He liked Winnie – a lot – but he couldn’t help but wonder when their relationship had gotten so serious. He knew she was awaiting a proposal, but he just couldn’t see marriage in their future. Not only that, but he didn’t think she could either, not really. The hesitation which seeped into every moment of their relationship was mutual, and this was what Gilbert clung onto, on those nights when he was wracked with guilt. 

Later, after his break was over, Gilbert received an email from Winnie. Her patient, who’s parents Gilbert knew from his childhood, had woken up from her coma, and would need a psychiatrist. He was glad he could repay the Cuthberts for the kindness they had shown him when he was young, and quickly booked her in for her first session the next afternoon.

**Chapter 1**

Anne woke up to the bright lights of the hospital room once again. She was disappointed, having hoped that all that stuff about her entire _life_ being a dream had been…a dream. But it wasn’t, and here she was, once again in a world which was familiar, yet unknown.

Jerry came to visit in the morning, Matthew and Marilla waiting downstairs so the pair could catch up.

“Annie!” His French accent reached her eyes before his friendly face, now accompanied by unfamiliar clothes, did. He crushed her into a hug. “I’m so glad you’re awake, I missed you so much. I’m sorry I couldn’t come yesterday! I was so caught up in things and then by the time I heard you were awake you were asleep so I couldn’t even call. Look at me I’m talking as much as you do!” A smirk played across his lips, and Anne scrunched up her nose, still frustrated by her constant confusion.

“Don’t call me Annie. Is it true you’re my real brother?”

“Real as in we were both adopted by the Cuthberts, yeah.” His shoulders drooped. “I heard you remember things… differently. So tell me, what was I like like in your memory?”

Anne launched into the tale of how she had been adopted by the Cuthberts who had wished for a boy, and how she thought they were replacing her by hiring the farmhand Jerry (present day Jerry laughed at this), and how they had argued at first, but their relationship had, admittedly, developed into a sort of sibling hood. Jerry made her laugh too, and she began to feel glad that they really _were_ siblings.

After a family lunch (which involved the four of them sitting in and around Anne’s hospital bed and eating cold cafeteria food), Anne was taken down to the Psychiatry ward. Nurse Jones led her to a door labelled “Doctor Blythe.”

Before Anne could react (which was a blessing because she didn’t know how she would, given the chance), she was inside.

“Miss Cuthbert. How are you?”

“Gilbert,” Anne breathed. He looked just the same - perhaps a little more tired, less clean shaven, and certainly in different clothing, but the same nonetheless.

Gilbert was surprised she knew his name. They had perhaps met once before, on one of his visits to Avonlea after his dad died, but that was years ago. Of course, he remembered her, but how could he not, with her striking hair, and unique personality?

“Please, sit down.” He watched as the nurse helped her into the chair before leaving, promising to retrieve Anne when the session was over. “How are you feeling?”

“Gil, I- do we…how do we know each other? In this time?”

“Ah yes, Win- I mean, Doctor Rose filled me in a little about your memory problems. Well, I suppose we don’t know each other, not really. We may have met, uh,” he coughed, “once or twice, years ago, but that’s it,” he said, kindly.

He didn’t expect her to burst into tears, but that’s what she did.

“Miss Cuthbert, what’s wrong?” He slipped off his chair and crouched down beside her, putting his hand on her arm. She flinched at the touch.

“Is there any chance I could get a different Psy-psych…”

“Psychiatrist?”

“Yes, that.”

“Why? I haven’t done something to offend you, have I?” His genuine concern seemed to only upset her further, so he tried again. “Miss Cuthbert, I’m terribly sorry, but what’s the matter?”

“Oh God, this is terribly embarrassing!” Anne began to sob again, before regaining composure. “You see, during my Coma, it seems I had this…dream…only of course that feels like real life, and this simply and _awful_ nightmare. And in this dream, which lasted years, by the way, I lived in Avonlea with the Cuthberts, only it was over 100 years ago, or so I’ve been told, and, well…you were in it too…”

“Oh.” Gilbert said, momentarily too shocked to speak, before asking, a smile on his face, what happened in the dream.

Anne muttered something, and Gilbert had to ask her to repeat herself.

“Well…you and I went to school together, and we weren’t really friends, in fact we were more academic rivals, and only became friends this past year. Actually we sort of drifted apart again, because you were courting Wi- I mean, we just sort of drifted apart a bit… And then there was this whole mixup with letters and then just before I left for Queens you…You have to remember, Gi- uh Doctor Blythe, that this isn’t..I didn’t “come up with” all of this. It seemed real to me. It still does!” She waited for him to nod and motion her to continue. “Well, when I arrived at Queens, and you were on your way to Toronto, the mixups sort of…became cleared up. And then you came to my boarding house and then you…well my Gilbert, the one I knew, he and I were…in love.”

Gilbert’s eyebrows shot up, in that familiar way which usually made Anne want to laugh, but now it’s familiarity, combined with the embarrassment of her confession, moved her to tears.

“Now do you see why I’d like a new Doctor?” Anne all but wailed.

“Ah, yes,” Gilbert coughed. “But don’t worry Miss Cuthbert,” (Anne wished he’d stop calling her that: the thrill of being called “miss” had worn off years ago, and now she loved to hear the way Gil, _her Gil,_ articulated her name. But no, he wasn’t _her_ Gil, she would have to remember that). “I promised you parents I would try to help you, and I will hold myself to that. I promise you I will stay professional and not treat you any differently because of this…this situation.” When Anne didn’t object, he continued. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like for you to be able tell me everything you remember from the dream, aswell as anything you remember about your real life.”

“I don’t remember anything from this life, not really. It’s like I’ve been here in a dream, which is why all these things which would’ve been impossible to me two days ago don’t make me feel afraid. But it’s not real.”

Not long after that the session ended, and Anne was tasked with writing down everything she could remember from her dream. She rose to the occasion and spent the raise of the day doing what she did best: storytelling. As she wrote, she described the three years she had spent at Green Gables to Matthew and Marilla, who enjoyed spotting similarities to “real life” events.

The next day saw Gilbert reading Anne’s “story”, as she anxiously watched on, his occasional chuckles being the only sound. When he finished the story, the Doctor turned to her and began to ask questions.

“How did you know I’m dating Winnifred?”

“I- I’m not sure. I _didn’t._ You know, I saw you together at the fair…” She kept her eyes on her fingers, which were drumming on her leg. Doctor Blythe thought for a moment.

“Perhaps…perhaps Matthew or Marilla told you.”

“Yes. Perhaps.” Anne would be lying if she said it didn’t hurt to picture Gilbert with Winnifred. They had _finally_ found each other, after years of skirting around their feelings, and now he was back with the girl who up until a few days had been _her_ Gilbert’s fiancé, or so she had thought. She knew that this Gilbert, the one who sat in front of her wasn’t hers, and frankly she felt embarrassed. He knew how she felt about him, or his 1800s doppelgänger, and he didn’t reciprocate those feelings. “Gil- Doc- Gilbert. I’d like to make something clear. While I loved- _love_ my Gil _,_ he is evidently not you. I mean, of course he isn’t - I don’t know you. So, please understand that…that I don’t have those…those feelings for you. I just don’t want things to be awkward, or for you to pity me because of it.” He looked taken aback.

“I- Of course. Strictly professional…”


End file.
